


that's my will, say it all

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Erica Reyes, Alpha Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Developing Friendships, Former Bad Alpha Derek Hale, Gen, Healing, Pack Building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 22:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16627853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: "Was he a bad alpha?" Malia says."Well," Erica says. "He wasn't good."





	that's my will, say it all

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the majority of this in 2014 and then it languished on my hard drive for... years. 
> 
> Thanks to Ashe, Luz, and mijra for their help!

The Reyes house is an unremarkable one-story ranch at the end of a cul-de-sac complete with a white picket fence and central AC. The screens on the windows are mostly decorative, but Mom is going to lose her shit whenever she discovers what Cora's done to this one.

"Hey," Cora says, swinging her leg over the sill. "Missed me?"

Erica rolls her eyes. 

Everything goes very fast after that. It seems impossible even after it happens, with Boyd still holding Deucalion to the floor, open throat bleeding sluggishly on the ground. "I have to finish it," Erica says, wiping blood splatter from her face, and she does. She tears Deucalion in two with new strength; for a moment, she mistakes it for satisfaction. 

Boyd only lets go of Deucalion when Erica starts to shake, too-familiar tremors. He says, "You're safe. It's over now." Except it's not. There's power rushing through her veins like a fire, rising up in her like a storm. Her eyes glow. Her claws lengthen. Boyd holds onto her and she breathes, in and out, palms curved over his sides, willing herself into submission.

Cora says, "I can deal with the body."

* * *

Erica has to be up at seven the next morning. The nurse in Dr. Sharp's office is wearing green scrubs with pink cupcakes on them. He weighs Erica, takes her temperature and her blood pressure, and enters everything into the computer on the counter. "Lookin' good. Here for another checkup?"

"Yeah," Erica says. "I guess."

She puts on the paper gown when the nurse leaves; it's not really paper, but this weird plastic-lined material that rustles loudly as Erica unfolds it. Dr. Sharp has been Erica's pediatrician as long as Erica can remember, through babyhood and toddlerhood and the parade of specialist that followed a string of seizures when she was four. 

"Your MRI looks great," Dr. Sharp says when she opens up Erica's chart. "When was your last seizure?"

Erica brushes her bangs out of her eyes. "Not since August." The same answer she's given to Dr. Sharp twice already; to her neurologist; to the internist in the hospital. 

After months off medication, off her scrupulously maintained keto diet, her seizures should have returned in full force. There's no explanation for her miraculous recovery in captivity except the one Erica can't give.

* * *

"Are you going back to school soon?" Erica says. They're on the couch, watching a re-run of _Spongebob Squarepants_ , which is enough cover for human ears. Erica's head is resting against Boyd's shoulder, their hands twined over Boyd's knee. 

Boyd rubs his thumb over the back of her hand; she digs her nails into his knee in response. "Next week. You still waiting on doctors?"

"Just the nutritionist," Erica says. "They're done observing me. No meds unless the seizures start again."

On the screen, Patrick bounds across the ocean floor to greet Spongebob before the show cuts to commercial. Legos for boys, legos for girls. Toys for children. 

"Cora says the rest of the alphas are gone," Boyd says. "She's still with Derek."

Erica takes a deep breath; she closes her eyes on the exhale. She hasn't seen Derek since he took her from the vault. Since he was her—

Right.

* * *

When Erica came back to school after the bite, she did it dressed to impress. She doesn't have to impress anyone anymore, but she does her makeup with the same care, heavily-lined eyes and and bright lips, tight pants and a low-cut top beneath her jacket. It's the first time she's bothered to put on her armor since she came home. Mom beams at her over the breakfast table. 

Boyd meets her by her locker. "Hey, alpha." He's smiling.

"Hey, yourself," Erica says. She hoists her backpack on her shoulder; it feels lighter than usual. 

They walk to class together, hands brushing. There's something settled between them now, easy and complete, a bond that feels so right that Erica can almost forget about what it means, why it's there.

* * *

After Cora leaves and takes Derek with her, Beacon Hills goes quiet. The rest of the semester passes, and so does Erica, despite all of the catch-up she's had to play. She shops for Christmas presents, pairs her tank tops with low-cut sweaters, goes out with Dad to pick out a tree. The investigation into her captivity stalls.

"You think we should form some kind of support group?" she says to Scott when they meet up at Burger King to talk—whatever. "Teen Alphas Anonymous. Party of two."

Scott shrugs. "We have to form something, I guess."

"We need a secret handshake?" Erica says.

Scott rolls his eyes. "We need a truce."

They're sitting in the back in one of those booths designed for four, plastic trays in front of them, paper mats advertising seasonal specials and 99-cent fries. Scott has chicken tenders and fries and three containers of honey mustard sauce; Erica has a whopper with extra cheese and no bun, because old habits die hard. It seems absurd that they're talking about this instead of the lab reports burning a hole in their backpacks. "We can cut this Sharks and Jets crap," she says, toying with her plastic fork. "I'm not out to hassle you."

"Uh huh," Scott says skeptically.

Erica sighs. "Didn't you and Derek work this stuff out?"

"You're not Derek," Scott says.

"Obviously," Erica says, even though agreeing feels disloyal. She's not Scott's wolf brother, and she's never been his mentor or his pack member, only his peer.

After moment, Scott holds out a fry like it's an olive branch. "We both care about Beacon Hills, and we're stronger together. I think we should be allies."

Scott cares about Beacon Hills like he's somebody's mom, or maybe somebody's savior; Erica cares about Beacon Hills like a dog cares about its kennel. She takes Scott's fry and dips it in her ketchup. Even knowing otherwise, every carb she eats still feels calculated, potent with risk and thrill. "You scratch my back, I scratch yours?"

"I've got your back," Scott says. "You've got mine."

Erica says, "Works for me," and finishes Scott's fries for him.

* * *

The first day back at school after winter break, Erica drops into the seat next to Danny's at the lunch table and says, "So, werewolves."

Everyone else at the lacrosse table pretends to ignore them, except one freshman who Greenberg kicks under the table. Danny rolls his eyes and says, "Fuck off."

"Ouch, babe." Erica folds her arms on the table and leans forward, giving the freshman a good angle for her cleavage. She leers at him until he squirms in his seat. "I'm hurt. Much like that time you let your ex-boyfriend shove me into a locker. Wait, which one was he? Jackson, Ethan?"

Danny picks up his tray. "Can we talk about this outside?"

Boyd follows them out of the cafeteria, and they eat in the courtyard, trays balanced on their knees as they sit on the edge of a planter. Erica has stripped the cold cuts and toppings off her sandwich, rolling up the tomatoes in the turkey; Boyd has meatloaf; Danny has a limp burger. The silence starts to get uncomfortable after a few minutes. Erica lets it go until someone cracks.

"We need a human in our pack," Boyd says, finally. "There are things werewolves can't do."

"If you're looking for a place to stick your dick, I'm flattered, but no," Danny says.

Erica rolls her eyes. "We need someone who can cross a mountain ash line. Someone who can use Google."

"Get Kevin," Danny says. "He's got a smartphone. He enjoys the show."

"Aw, but you're _smart_ ," Erica says. "You know about us, but you're not one of us. You like boys with teeth, but you can't keep them. Doesn't that eat you up?" 

Danny goes quiet. He dips his burger in the pool of ketchup on his place, takes a bite, chews methodically. Takes another bite. "Does Stiles actually do magic?"

Boyd clears his throat. "We're not talking about Stiles. I'd prefer not to have to talk to Stiles. Hence, you."

"Yeah, if you want to put on your robe and wizard hat, you _definitely_ need to use Google," Erica says.

Danny sighs, which isn't a _no_.

* * *

Her next pack member is a coyote.

"Scott found her, I think we get dibs," Stiles hisses at Erica.

Erica ignores him. She's already pointedly ignoring Lydia and the new girl who's totally freaked out by the naked-girl-formerly-a-coyote. Scott can do damage control, make a new BFF, whatever. Erica gets down on coyote girl's level to crawl closer. "Hey, you want some clothes?"

Coyote girl blinks at her warily, but she doesn't run. "Who are you?"

"Your alpha," Erica says. "If you want." She stops a few feet from coyote girl and lets her eyes bleed red.

The girl is silent for a while, watching Erica. She sits up, tugs her knees toward her, uncaring about her nakedness; Stiles coughs and turns away. Her hair is dirty, her nails long, curved and chipped. "What's your name?"

"Erica," Erica says. 

"Malia," coyote girl says. "That's me."

Erica smiles, her real smile, and tries again. "You want something to eat?"

* * *

There's one more truce Erica has to make, the hardest one. She looks at the terms Allison's drawn up and says, "Yeah, I don't think so."

Allison bites her lip. "I'm not going to—"

"Stab me? Kill me? Burn my pack alive?" Erica barely manages to hold back her shift. "I have a truce with Scott. I'm not making one with you."

They're sitting across from each other at a tiny table in Starbucks, which is the closest they could find to neutral ground. Erica doesn't drink coffee; Allison goes to the trendy place with the latte art by her apartment. They both have black iced teas, oversteeped and bitter.

"We have a new code," Allison says. "We're protectors. Not hunters."

"Cute," says Erica. "I'm still a predator. I bite. If you want to put me down, you'll have to do it to my face."

* * *

The bite. Derek bit her neck, close, intimate. He appeared out of the darkness like a dream. He stroked her hair back from her face said, "What if everything got even better?"

Erica finds Scott in the locker room after school. She doesn't shove him up against a locker this time—they're supposed to be equals now. Instead, she folds her arms and leans against someone's locker while Scott towels his hair and Stiles scrambles into his shirt.

"Are you going to bite anybody?" she says casually.

"Uh, I don't think so," Scott says. "Do we have to have this conversation here?"

"Yes," Erica says.

Scott frowns at her and sets his towel down on the bench. He's sculpted like a Men's Fitness cover; Erica's wearing a push-up bra and fake Louboutins she got off eBay for $30. Some kid peeks around the corner of the row of lockers, stares, retreats. "Are you going to?"

"Nope," Erica says. "You'd bite somebody if they got hurt, right? If they got sick?"

"…probably," Scott says after a long pause. He carefully doesn't look at Stiles, openly eavesdropping behind them. "If they wanted."

Erica pushes off the wall, neatly balancing on her heels. The wolf shapes them, molds them, gives them grace and power. They turn with the bite. Erica's different now; she doesn't know about better. "When you bite someone, truce is off. We renegotiate."

"' _When_ '?" Stiles says to Scott. Yeah, that's going to be a fun conversation.

* * *

Erica's spent enough full moons indoors, first in the vault and then in her room at home. She waits to ask until the lull after dinner, when Mom's doing the dishes and watching _Jersey Shore_ through the pass-through into the den. "I want to sleep over at my friend's house on Friday. Malia Tate."

"The girl who's been living in the wild for a decade?" Dad says, swiping through _NYT_ articles on his iPad.

"Yeah," Erica says. "I guess that was on the news."

Mom rinses the colander and sets in the strainer. "I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with you being away overnight, honey. She couldn't come here?"

There are a couple of ways Erica can play this. "Her dad doesn't want her to go out, either." Not that Malia pays much attention. "Mom, what happened to me—she gets it." The bite, the change. "You can call him, talk to him if you want. I have his number."

* * *

Dad drops Erica off after school on Friday. "Call us to check in before bed, and when you're up in the morning," he says. "I'll be here at noon sharp. That good for you?"

"I'll call at _your_ bedtime," Erica says as she reaches into the back seat for her bag.

Dad rolls his eyes. "Don't sass me."

Malia's dad works second shift, so he's home long enough to interrogate Erica and stare at her suspiciously before Malia starts shoves Erica toward her room, saying, "Girl time, Dad!" Malia's not looking, so Erica's the one who sees his face soften as she steps backward into the hallway.

The outline of their plan is simple enough. Boyd's spending the night at Danny's—the four of them will converge in the forest a few hours after sundown, run the circuit, let Danny see what wolves are under the moonlight. Until then, Erica and Malia are on their own. Girl time. Erica lets her nails grow long when the sun goes down; goodbye, Red Delicious polish.

"I don't have an anchor." Malia glances out her window at the vibrant sky. "Stiles says—"

"Don't listen to Stiles," Erica says. "You've been like this for weeks. What keeps you from changing back?"

Malia's quiet for a while. "Our pack isn't shifted. My dad's human."

Erica puts her hands on Malia's shoulders, turns Malia toward her. "Change if you want. I'll call you back. I always will. I'm your alpha. I promise you." She lets her eyes burn.

After a moment, Malia changes under her hands, coyote girl to coyote. Her fur is soft, plush beneath Erica's hands. Erica pulls back her claws so she can comb through Malia's coat, scratch behind her ears, beneath her jaw, and when Malia rolls over, rub the vulnerable stretch of Malia's belly. She lets out a steady, low rumble, halfway between a purr and growl.

"It feels good, doesn't it?" Erica says. "I bet you always want to be like this. I would."

Malia doesn't answer; she leans into Erica's touch. They rest like that until Danny knocks on Malia's window and Erica has to sit up to answer him.

* * *

"If I get murdered out here, my parents are going to have to identify my body," Danny says as they trudge through the outlying trees and into the preserve.

Erica says, "Yeah, we know." Her senses are acute with the shift, her connection with each of them heightened by the rounded moon. She can feel Malia's joy, Danny's excitement, Boyd's hesitance. "We're good, babe," she says to Boyd, reaching for his hand. "Everything's going to be fine."

The last time that Boyd and Erica left set out by themselves into the woods, they were Hansel and Gretel walking into a witch's cabin. They were strong, but not strong enough. Now, they've gotten what they wanted: an alpha, a unified pack. Malia steadies Danny when he trips over a fallen branch, nudging his thigh with her head: _careful_. A howl cuts through the night sounds—Scott's pack is out here, too.

"You know, I have practice at ass o'clock tomorrow," Danny says after a mile or two. "If I just wanted to have werewolves run circles around me, it could have waited until the morning."

"Wait," Erica says. "Here we are."

They've come to a clearing, the light overhead pure and unfiltered by the weave of branches. Erica takes Danny's hand with her free one, and Boyd reaches down to touch Malia. Danny gets the picture, completes the circuit, and something builds between them. Pack. Power. There's mountain ash and there's this, the connection he'll channel. Danny says, "Whoa."

"You signed up to Google, too," Boyd says. "Don't forget about that."

They run.

* * *

Derek always used to say that pack was family, maybe because his had been. He made them have group meetings, hang out together, even though they had little in common aside from being werewolves and everyone but Erica having someone in their immediate family who was dead. 

After that first full moon, Erica's pack starts meeting up for pizza every week. Erica eats the cheese and pepperoni; Malia eats Erica's crusts, because she'll eat anything. Boyd gets pineapple on his portion and Danny gets meat lovers. 

"What exactly do are we doing here?" Danny says during pizza night number three, this one in Boyd's living room. "I mean, there's no—" He waves his hand to indicate something he doesn't want Nana to overhear in the other room.

Boyd says, deadpan, "Friendship is magic." He's on the couch with Malia in front of him on the floor, twisting her hair into a fishtail braid. Malia loves having her hair played with, her face made up, human grooming rituals that take the place of her coyote ones. Boyd and Danny are the best at it; they both grew up with little sisters.

Erica dissects another slice of pizza and dumps the remains onto Malia's paper plate. "We're waiting for Scott to call us," she says. "It's like the Babysitters Club."

"I wish I didn't know what you were talking about," Danny says.

"Ms. Morrell's an emissary," Boyd says. "You could talk to her about it."

* * *

Sometimes Malia crawls in Erica's window and curls up in bed with her, tangling their limbs together and crowding Erica's face on the pillow. Erica's never had close friends who were girls before; maybe this is how girls always are. She likes it, the way Malia cuddles close and snores softly, grabs one of Erica's hands and holds it to her chest tightly. Malia holds onto everything she likes. 

One morning Erica wakes up and Malia's staring at her, bright-eyed. "Your parents are up. They're making breakfast."

"My window's on the other side of the house, I can distract them," Erica mutters, eyes closing again. She's not ready to be up yet, warm in the nest of her bed with the sounds of her house and her family around her, Mom making coffee and Dad getting out the stuff for pancakes. "Or you can stay, if you want. I'll tell them you had a fight with your dad or something."

Malia's silent for a moment. "My dad doesn't know that I caused the accident."

Erica cracks open her eyes, squinting until they focus on Malia's face, her mouth tight, eyes blue, then bluer. "Do you remember it?"

"No," Malia says. "Just—I told my mom I wished she was dead. I shifted. They're dead now."

When Erica was nine, she fell down the stairs and broke her ankle. No seizure, just clumsy feet; it took a long time to heal. She twists her hand in Malia's until they're holding hands. "I'm sorry," she says.

Malia bites her lip. Her eyes are so bright. "How can you say that?"

"I'm your alpha," Erica says. "You're my pack. They were your pack, too."

They go down to breakfast together, Malia in Erica's oldest sleep shirt, the one with Garfield on the front that she stole from Mom. When her parents look up from their breakfast, surprised, she says, "Malia needed somewhere to crash last night, so—"

"I'll make more coffee," says Mom.

* * *

"You look happy," Boyd says at lunch, taking a cookie off Erica's tray. She's already swiped his milk. "So do they."

Malia's sitting next to Danny, their heads bent over their history textbook. He's patient, explaining; she takes lots of notes. Erica's body thrums with contentment. She grins, wriggles in her seat a little. "I like our pack."

Beneath the ankle, Boyd twins their ankles. "Me, too."

She doesn't think about it until later, what it would have been like to come into a pack like theirs. What it would have been like if Derek hadn't lured her in and then shoved her away, forced her to preen and posture to get his attention. His betas were all outcasts, weirdos; the way Derek singled them out, he kept them that way, made them feel special and even more shunned by turn. 

Erica's pack is just as motley and weird, but they're all weird together. They can split a pizza. They could probably even save the day, if they had to.

* * *

"Your grades are up this semester," Mom says as she sorts their combined laundry: darks, colors, whites. Erica is at the big sink, scrubbing bloodstains out of her oldest pair of panties and rubbing in stain remover. Some things don't change. "I'm proud of you, honey."

Erica sits her underwear on the edge of the sink, moves on to Dad's spaghetti-tarnished khakis. "Thanks," she says after a moment. "Did you put my report card on the fridge?" 

Mom's tossing the dark pile into the open washer; she smiles. "Maybe. Pass me your undies."

When Erica ventures into the kitchen, her report card is indeed on the display, all As and Bs. Her grades have never been that great—she's spent a lot of time out of school. Good grades, no seizures, new friends: her disappearance has worked some alchemy in Erica that her parents welcome more than investigate.

* * *

Danny starts meeting with Ms. Morrell after school. He doesn't have any natural aptitude for magic, but the basics are things that anyone can do. Ash, fire, belief. Rowan, tinder, will. The rest can come with practice and time.

"Have you noticed that we kind of suck?" he says to Erica while they're working on homework one day, hurrying through pre-calc together before the first bell rings.

Erica draws a heart, _r_ = 1 - sin(&172;). "Go work with Lydia if you want, no one's stopping you."

"Scott's pack is actually good at stuff." Danny tilts his notebook toward her so she can copy the problem he just worked; she finishes hers and does the same. "They know stuff. Stiles—Ms. Morrell told me about him."

"He'd have to come to you if he wanted to hack into anything," Erica says. 

They're quiet for a moment, pencils scratching against graph paper while a river of yawning, chattering kids flows past their table in the courtyard. Erica draws four loops that radiate out from their center like the petals of a flower, like the symbol of the bank where she was kept for months. Ms. Morrell was the one who set that ash, who locked them in. _Emissaries must remain neutral,_ she said, which was bullshit. Is bullshit. Neutral's even worse than evil.

"There are things they don't know," Erica says. "Things they can't know; there's other stuff that you can learn. Also, come on, Isaac's not good at anything."

Like an equation, Danny's mouth curves into a smile. "He looks good in the locker room."

Erica snorts. "Tap that on your own time. We've got five minutes."

* * *

Derek shows up on her doorstep three weeks later. "I've harvesting crystals," he says, thumbs hooked into his front pockets. Casual. "Working with Cora's pack."

Mom is hovering in the hallway, looking curious. Ugh. Hot older guy, possibly recognizable from the time his face was plastered on wanted posters around town, turning up at pizza night? Erica does not want to have this conversation. She raises her eyebrows at Derek. "Werewolf blood diamonds?" 

" _Healing crystals_." Derek clears his throat expectantly.

Erica always used to feel something around Derek, fear or desire or some muddled elixir. For a moment, she's overcome by heady, red-eyed rage—then, nothing. Behind them, someone clears their throat. "Hey, aren't you Stiles's cousin?" Danny says.

"Yeah, he was just going.” Erica straightens her spine and looks up into his blue eyes. "I'm sure Stiles is at Scott's."

After pizza and Monopoly disband, Erica and Malia head upstairs, shower, dress for sleep. That's the nicest thing about parentally sanctioned sleepovers—sharing the quiet ritual of ending the day, before they climb into bed and curl toward each other. Malia says, "Who was that?" She says it soft as a breath, like she already knows.

Erica takes one of Malia's hands in hers, plays with Malia's fingers until Malia clasps her other hand over their joined ones, stills the movement. "Derek was my alpha. Boyd's, too. He's not an alpha anymore."

"I thought you killed yours." Malia doesn't sound too concerned by it, but she's never bothered by animal violence. Just the fucked-up shit humans do to each other.

"No." Erica shakes her head. "That was one of the ones who hurt me and Boyd, after we left Derek. "

"Was he a bad alpha?" Malia says.

"Well," Erica says. "He wasn't good."

* * *

"I don't like it," Boyd says, when she asks him later. "Why would Scott accept him?"

"He knows werewolf stuff." Erica's hanging upside down from the monkey bars in the neighborhood playground, and Boyd's standing below her, watching with a bemused smile on his face. It's almost dark; no one else is out here. "Maybe Scott wants that."

"That's not a good reason," Boyd says.

"Well, we're the loser pack and we won't take him." Erica says. "Who else is there?"

Boyd catches her hands, pulls her towards him, then lets go so Erica swings backward in a dizzying arc. She laughs, clamping her knees down tight so she doesn't lose her balance. "We're losers together."

"That's all I wanted," Erica says. "That and you, babe."

They're not like that, now that she's Boyd's alpha. Couldn't be. Erica can tell him what to do, and he can leave or listen. She doesn't, but if she wanted, she could. Derek did. 

Erica swings back, then forward far enough that she can catch up to a bar closer to the end and right herself. She drops down in a crouch, bracing herself with a hand on the ground. When Boyd offers her a hand up, she accepts it.

"You got me," he says, his warmth stirring her power like a spoon in honey. "Alpha."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
